Kike Mayer

About the Artist

Enrique (a.k.a. Kike) Mayer is the son of a German father and an Italian mother who was born on February 4, 1959, in San Carlos de Bariloche, Rio Negro province, Argentina. 

Kike’s aptitude and enthusiasm for drawing became apparent in his early teens. In his High School senior year, he earned a scholarship from the American Field Source program that provided him the opportunity to study in Big Bear, California for one year. During that time, he exhibited a work and won first prize: Drawing Room Adventures in Art. Although Kike's interest in art proceeded this year, it was during this time that he began to consider a profession in the field.  Kike is an autodidactic artist, self-taught, and calls his style Patagonian Realism which loosely alludes to “wild realism”. Kike’s work is driven by the realism of environment and the people within the environment. He takes these impressions and stains them with chimerical, mythological, and dream-like interpretation.  In this process of creating figurative images, there is an alien but recognizable moment when the sensibility of the finite begins to shift and move. When these margins begin to loosen, collaborative associations form. It is in this crude amalgam of variable images, that a metamorphosis takes place fusing the wild and real together.  It is the process of amalgamation that inspires the quintessence of Kike’s work. 

Kike has exhibited extensively throughout South America (see Resume), and in Germany and Italy. In 1997, by invitation, Kike came to Central California which was his first, formal opportunity to introduce his art to the United States. He has established collectors in San Francisco, Oregon, and the Central Valley.

Kike works full-time as a painter and teaches privately on occasion. His wife, Patricia Matoes, is a Physics graduate who holds a senior position in research, nuclear materials, for the National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA). Additionally, she is Province Coordinator of Scientific and Technological Youth Activities: Science and Technology, Assistant Secretary, Rio Negro province. 

They have four children that Kike refers to as his “other art”.

In December 2002, Kike and his family finished building their own home with timber from their land. "I am proud of this work and for me and my family this marks a new chapter in our lives".

Artist Statement

Personal style: Realismo Patagonic

I was born and raised in San Carlos de Bariloche, Rio Negro province, Argentina. This pristine and isolated region of Patagonia has undoubtedly contributed to the development of my personal style that I refer to as Patagonian Realism.

I am primarily self taught, however many of the Great Masters of Art have been influential.  I admire Bosch, Brueghel the Elder, Escher, and Dali; as well as Xul Solar and Quinquela Martin of Argentina.

 Living in Bariloche, I was not directly exposed to, nor taught by, the tradition of Modernism. The conditions of environment—the isolation of the region and sociopolitical history of Argentina, the simple and direct language of the common people, the crude realism formed from dream images, and Chilota Mythology are the elements that have shaped and molded my work, my life.

Art Nexus Fellowship Award

 In 2004 / 2005, Mayer was chosen to be the recipient of the prestigious 7^th Annual Latin American Artist Residency Fellowship Award sponsored by Vermont Studio Center (VSC) Johnson, Vermont. Each year one artist, living in Latin America, is selected by VSC to be the recipient of the Nexus Award, a month-long residency program, representing their country of origin.  Publicity for this scholarship is published in Art Nexus magazine (a leading publication in Latin American and Hispanic art featuring foremost art experts covering all aspects of art in the Americas).  

The Vermont Studio Center, an international artist’s community, began the international Award’s program in 1998.  Prominent American and international recipients have included Robert Berlind, Peter Schumann, Lois Dodd, Bill Jensen, Carole Robb, Grace Knowlton, Stuart Shils, Nari Ward, Joel Fischer, WIllard Boepple, Hugh O'Donnell, and Hitoshi Nakazato.  Renowned Latin American artists have included Fernando Toledo of Panama, Christian Cojulun of Guatemala, Nelson Gutierrez of Columbia, Diana Gonzalez Gandolfi of Argentina, and Maria Eugenia Longo from Brazil.                 

Social Surrealism and Man of La Mancha at the Vermont Studio Center  By Rebecca Rice

Query for art lovers: What do you get when you combine social surrealism, Patagonia, the Man of La Mancha, and a April residency at the Vermont Studio Center? Answer: 45-year-old Argentine painter Enrique (Kike) Mayer producing one of the finest works of his career, “Warming Up,” a meditation on the geopolitical crisis of global warming.

            Mr. Mayer arrived in the village of Johnson in northern Vermont to begin his residency as an Art Nexus fellow on March 27, 2005; this would be his fifth visit to the United States.

           Mayer, who has lived most of his life in the small town of San Carlos de Bariloche in the Andes some 600 miles from Buenos Aires, had spent his senior year in high school in Big Bear Lake, California, having won a scholarship with the American Field Service.

            “I had never learned English up until then,” Mayer remembers, “so at first it was a little difficult. But I am, how do you say, a quick learner. I took art and ceramics and I even learned badminton. And the family I lived with took very good care of me. I am still in touch with them.”

            Mayer, a rangy, affable fellow who sports a tiny ponytail and a ready smile, adopted with equal ease to the international creative community of the Vermont Studio Center, the largest artists’ and writers’ colony in the United States, serving 600 artists each year (50 per month) in 2-12-week residencies on a thirty-building campus. Two weeks after Mayer arrived, he offered a workshop in maskmaking to other Studio Center residents, a diverse group of artists who hailed from such exotic  locales as China and the Czech Republic, India and Ireland, the Philippines and the United Kingdom. The workshop was a great success, and after the masks were completed, Mayer threw a carnival-like party in the VSC lounge where all the artists paraded about in their creations—smiling wolves, frowning clowns, scaly fish, toothy monsters, all mingling together as if at some hippie-style masked ball.  

            During his month at VSC, Mayer also found time to offer his maskmaking workshop to students at Johnson Elementary School, a short walk from the Studio Center’s campus. “The kids loved him and the workshop,” said VSC Staff Artist and Teacher Arista Alanis, who often brings international artists like Mayer into the school.

A natural-born teacher, Mayer has been giving mask-making workshops to students at his studio in San Carlos de Bariloche for over 20 years. The technique, Cartapesta, is an ancient one first developed by the Venetians: it involves gluing together lots of tiny pieces of newspaper onto cardboard and then painting and decorating the mask. “What’s great about Cartapesta,” Mayer  observes, “is that it’s cheap and eco-friendly because you are using recycled materials.” 

Concern for the fate of the earth is clearly something Mayer feels passionate about. “Warming Up” is filled with images of trees, flowers, sea creatures, and prehistoric animals crowded out and, in some cases, nearly obliterated by leaking oil cans, discarded gears and cogs, saws, clocks, and other trappings of modern life. The only humans in Mayer ’s painting are peasants with huge sombreros racing across the cluttered, peso-dotted landscape, their arms held up towards the weeping flowers and flaming leaves, struggling to flee the Armageddon of an earth out of sync with itself. At the top of the painting, a pair of hands holds the disc of the sun, preparing to crack it like an egg. 

            Mayer started drawing and playing with clay when he was a small child, his talent encouraged by his mother.  Although he never attended college or art school, he is an autodidact, getting many of his ideas from the Bible and from classical and modern literature (he admires Cervantes as well as Julio Cortazar). His themes can range from meditations on the seven deadly sins, with Pride, Greed, Envy, Anger, Lust, Gluttony, and Sloth tricked out as Spanish card players to an Alice-in-Wonderland-like evocation of the child’s game of musical chairs.   

Married to a physicist, he is also the father of four children who range in age from 4 to 22. He explains that his youngest, Aime, also shows a facility for art, and proudly pulls out a photo of her standing at a child-sized easel, painting beside him in his studio at home.

Mayer begins a new painting by moving around in his studio, listening to music, and generating lots of sketches. “Warming Up” took two weeks to complete, and Mayer estimates that he completes about 6 paintings a year. “A Forest of Hands” is the second painting that Mayer worked on during his month at the Vermont Studio Center. An examination of the tree-like lines in human palms as well as a reflection on the uses of hands in praying, playing, and working, “A Forest of Hands” promises to be another beautifully crafted and philosophically evocative work.     

Winning the Art Nexus fellowship at Vermont Studio Center has proved to be an incomparable opportunity for Mayer. “This is the first time I have ever been to an art colony,” Mayer enthuses. “Being with so many talented artists from all over the world has been so inspiring.”

            But, as with any true artist, the focus always returns to the work. “As soon as I finish one painting,” Mayer says, his eyes shining happily with the prospect, “I am onto the next.”  

                                                ***

Byline: Rebecca Rice is the Grants & Publicity Manager at the Vermont  Studio Center . The Art Nexus fellowship has been offered since 1998.  The next deadline is April 1, 2006. Check the VSC website for details about applying. www.vermontstudiocenter.org 

MAIN:

SERVICES: 

CONNECT: 

OUR SITES:

SHOPPING:

Home
  Directory
Art Store
Artists
Children's Art
Classifieds